Sydney Leathers on Anthony Weiner: ‘He is a liar’

Sydney Leathers, 23, appears on the CBS television programme "Inside Edition", in this July 25, 2013 handout photo provided by CBS.

Inside Edition/CBS/Handout/Reuters

“I don’t know who the real Anthony Weiner is,” said the latest woman to reveal her sexually explicit online relationship with the New York City mayoral candidate and disgraced former congressman. In an exclusive interview with Inside Edition, Sydney Leathers said the Democratic politician should “stop lying and get some help” for his habit of exchanging lewd messages with women on the Internet.
“I felt like, you know, he was saying one thing to me, saying another thing to his wife, saying another thing on the campaign trail,” Leathers said. “He is a liar.”
A day after the gossip website TheDirty.com published a series of messages from Facebook and Formspring and blurred photos sent by Weiner and Leathers, Weiner admitted that he had continued to engage in online conversations that were sexual in nature even after his resignation two summers ago. On Thursday, Weiner told reporters that he did not talk with “dozens and dozens” of women.
“Six to ten, I suppose.” Weiner said. “But I can’t tell you absolutely what somebody else is going to consider inappropriate or not.”
Leathers, who describes herself as a “total political junkie nerd,” frequently posted about her progressive views on Facebook. The 23-year-old Indiana native first sent a Facebook message to Weiner after he resigned from Congress in June 2011, saying she was disappointed with him. According to TheDirty.com’s founder, Nik Richie, Weiner replied a year later in July 2012—and wound up in an Internet relationship of explicit messages, phone sex, and declarations of love.
Their relationship “fizzled out” by November, and the two did not speak until a New York Times Magazine profile of Weiner and his wife was published in April. Weiner reached out to Leathers and asked her what she thought about the profile.
“These things did take place before and after I resigned. Over a period of time,” Weiner told reporters Thursday at a soup kitchen in Brooklyn. “Sometimes they didn’t go consistently, whatever. But the point is they’re behind me. It’s a year ago, at least.”
Weiner, who used the pseudonym “Carlos Danger,” acknowledged he carried on his behavior–the catalyst for his congressional resignation–after he resigned. Weiner has declared that he will continue campaigning, and has pledged that his online relationships are behind him.
In tears, Leathers also declared an apology to Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin. “I am extremely sorry for my part in the hurt and pain that she’s obviously feeling right now,” Leathers said in her interview. “I just feel very very sorry for my part in the pain that she obviously feels.”
“It’s embarrassing but it was how I felt at the time, and how he felt at the time,” she added.
Leathers’ mother is also not a fan of the mayoral candidate. “I have nothing to say except God help New York if he gets to be mayor. You can print that,” Laura Leathers told New York Daily News at her home in Allendale, Ill.
Leathers also said how “shocked” she was to find out that he carried on with his behavior. “I didn’t think he would be so foolish as to do the same thing all over again. He was making these campaign promises that he had totally changed and he was a better man now and he learned from his mistakes. And I am proof that that is not true.”
The reporter asked, “Do you think he was trying to pull one over on the voters of New York?” Leathers replied, ”Oh, absolutely, otherwise he wouldn’t have went on the whole–‘Oh, I’m a changed man. I’ve learned my lesson.’ He wouldn’t have said all those things if he wasn’t trying to be someone he wasn’t.”